Raspberry Pi - 9/06/15

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

Throughout the week I have been studying Python language and getting a crash course as to how it functions.  In most part it is similar to other programming languages but differs in it's lesser emphasis on syntaxes.  This cuts down the chances of errors and greatly simplifies coding.  This is looking promising.

Before getting the Raspberry Pi, I made sure this time I did my proper background check and research.  I read up that because the Raspberry Pi, performance-wise resembles that of a pentium 2 computer back in the day, it might not be able to handle the requirements set by object tracking programs very well.  However, it did state that object tracking is still possible and it still uses OpenCV.  With this in mind, I bought the latest Raspberry Pi 2 B at $89 including class 10 SD card, case, and power charger.  By this point we are over the $250 budget because of wrong purchases with the Arduino unit.  However, counting just the Raspberry Pi unit with the other components necessary for the project, we are still under budget by more than $100.  This is the Raspberry Pi Unit.

In addition to this, we have also built the buzzer and HUD unit on a bread board shown below followed by a schematic of both circuits.

Warning Unit

The Raspberry Pi has 40 general purpose input output (GPIO) pins that you can use to connect simple output or input devices, sensors and actuators.  The output voltage is set at 3.3V and we have decided with the limited voltage, we will be using 3 LED's instead.  We will also be using pins 16 and 21 as output pins to send signals to the buzzer and HUD LED's respectively.